Loups-Garous

by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

  “Have you contacted her parents?” Kunugi asked.

  “I approached them immediately. They’re en route right now but are supposed to be back home tonight.”

  “I know they’re working, but do parents not contact their kid themselves?”

  “I guess they must not. There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “I don’t have a family, so I wouldn’t know. Come to think of it, I come from what would be described as a broken home.”

  “That’s a play on words. Family is a concept and not a thing, after all, so it can’t be broken.”

  “I guess not.”

  “No. It just means the concept has changed meaning in your case, Mr. Kunugi. The concept of home or blood relations were defined differently in your youth, and back then as now, a family was a living arrangement in which you cohabited with blood relatives or else assigned relatives, so it’s not that the ‘family’ was broken. The model family is structured according to each era, obviously, and right now this is just what happens to be your definition of a home. That it differs from the past does not mean it is broken. What do you think?”

  I actually think that’s stupid, Shizue wanted to add.

  They were from different times.

  “You just called me by my name for the first time,” Kunugi said out of nowhere.

  Shizue turned her head, regretting she didn’t go with the more appropriate “officer.” Kunugi looked ahead and smiled.

  “Well, maybe. But when I was young, these bureaucrats would come and talk down to my family, talk down to me, and it made me feel out of place. Stupid phrases like ‘self-discovery’ and ‘broken homes’ were probably all coined during that time.”

  “It’s a given that in every age there will be stupid words.”

  “Well, probably. But I thought I didn’t understand them because I was young at the time, and you’d think I’d know now that I’m old, but I don’t.

  “It’s not like I gave up or gave in,” Kunugi said as he switched something in the navigator. “It just means that before I felt out of place with the gap between me and the older generation, and now it’s a gap between me and your younger generation.”

  “Humans are protective. It’d be difficult for them to change internally. Younger generations will always be viewed as being dumber, more frivolous, and useless. But of course it’s that dumber more frivolous person who creates the next generation.”

  “You are one well-argued woman,” Kunugi said. As Shizue turned her face, the middle-aged man let his line of vision shift over to the passenger seat ever so briefly.

  “I’m allowed to say something like that since we’re just talking privately, right?”

  “Technically, but…”

  “Yeah, so, for me…I’m just wondering if parents don’t worry, that’s all.”

  “That’s something we’re responsible for at the center.”

  “I see.”

  That was a rote answer, no doubt. It felt empty. This middle-aged man probably detected that Shizue did not speak from her heart, and responded accordingly.

  Who would trust the center or the counselors anyway?

  “So…she’s supposed to live somewhere around here.”

  “Okay.”

  Shizue looked at her monitor. Her current location was marked.

  The solar car slowed down to a stop. Kunugi ran his personal ID card through the side of the navigator.

  “This is a police vehicle and all, so anything I do with it after hours is on my personal record.”

  “Then should I file an applica—”

  “Hurry up and go,” Kunugi said upon pulling up his own monitor.

  Shizue pushed open her door and stepped into the dark city.

  Normally, no one from the center would go directly to a child’s home. In extreme situations there might be a shut-in that required counseling, or a special circumstance that required a counselor to examine the home to determine whether the home environment was a safe one. Otherwise, visits were once-annual affairs.

  Shizue had only been to Yuko Yabe’s home once.

  She was not a child with problems.

  Still…

  Shizue didn’t remember any of this.

  The assigned living quarters were identical from the outside throughout the country. Remembering it would have been impossible.

  Inside the house…

  She remembered the inside of Yabe’s house being a shambles.

  It was full of deformée character toys from the twentieth century.

  No, that was…

  That was something she remembered from the database.

  Most of the personal data on the kids she had was in her head. She’d memorized their habits and proclivities. This information on them, the preconceptions about the kids, formed imaginary memories in Shizue’s mind. These detailed pieces of information could take on a life of their own. And on the whole they’d not be far off and would occasionally jibe with reality.

  This was the worst kind of profiling, and she hated it.

  You couldn’t measure or understand a human being that way, Shizue believed.

  She’d always believed this when it came to her work. Subjectively profiling people was a kind of personality analysis, no different from the mantic arts.

  That was the right thing.

  Subjectively speaking such an analysis was necessary in any given situation. Curbing that analysis at the level of reference was the appropriate thing to do.

  That went without saying, Shizue thought.

  Still, even today there remained those adherents to profiling. Idiots who believed it was the only way to distinguish people. All of it…

  They believed it because sometimes they ended up being right.

  This was obviously not because the profiling technique was so advanced.

  No matter how minute the survey or how exacting the analogy, that analogy was never the reality. And if the analogy kept hitting the bull’seye, it was not because of advanced technology.

  If the assumption were true, it was because people were able to visualize the prototype having parsed him or her self. It was because so many people grew up in this environment. It should be assumed there were simply more people who were able to self-regulate according to the stereotypes they might match.

  Shizue sighed and chased out the image of Yuko Yabe’s room from her head.

  She confirmed the apartment number on her monitor and refreshed her connection just in case. The main monitor announced a vacancy, and the portable monitor was not being recognized. It was possible to deny it a connection, but monitors almost always recognized one another. Maybe Yabe’s was broken. Maybe it was broken into.

  Shizue turned around and saw Kunugi’s back leaning against the driverside door of the car. The thinly armored vehicle most definitely did not suit this man.

  Yabe’s home was supposed to be in the third building from the corner.

  The vacancy indicator said it was unoccupied.

  If anyone were in the room that sign would not be lit. Either the sensors were broken or no one was home.

  Shizue swiped her card through the reader and left her visiting information.

  Her ID number displayed along with the time: 5:20 pm.

  She inputted the reason for her visit and connected the monitor to the card reader. She then downloaded information and discovered that no one had been in there since 8:12 pm two nights before.

  No one’s been here since then?

  It’d been forty-five hours since. Meaning Yuko Yabe had now spent two nights outside of her own home. According to her file there were no other residences Yuko would have been able to stay at. Meaning…

  It was possible she was caught up in something.

  Shizue looked back at Kunugi.

  He stood there staring at nothing, as if thinking he had nothing left to do, having brought Shizue out here.

  He couldn’t have had ulterior motives. He was probably just sticking around in case s
omething was wrong here.

  A model policeman.

  She thought of calling to him but stopped. Her unease kept roiling inside her, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it.

  She looked at the door again.

  Yuko couldn’t be inside…

  “What’s going on?” Kunugi’s voice sailed over her head. “Not home after all?”

  Shizue didn’t answer. His voice came closer.

  “When were they last here?”

  “Two nights ago.”

  Kunugi was right behind Shizue.

  “That’s odd.”

  “Can’t you get us in?”

  “I could, but…even if I held up my badge and let us in it’d be no use,” Kunugi answered. Now he stood by Shizue’s side. “The police are only allowed to take out a lock in case of emergencies, and Class D emergencies at that.”

  “This is an emergency.”

  “Anything over a Class B must be handled by at least a captain. This is barely a Class A. You just report this to the local precinct and that’s it.

  If it says no one’s in there, no one’s in there. It wouldn’t say that unless absolutely no one was in there. If there is really someone inside, it just means the sensor is broken.”

  “It might be. It doesn’t even recognize my monitor.”

  “Well, that’s the kid’s personal monitor, right? The house’s main terminal should still be on.”

  That was true.

  “Besides, if we barge in I have to file the report.” Kunugi turned his rugged face to Shizue and made a weird expression with his eyebrows. “Well…a suspicion is a suspicion. I suppose I can do a vacancy sensor check.”

  Kunugi pulled his police ID monitor from a holster. Shizue hurriedly pulled the cable from her own monitor from the card reader.

  “The visitor’s record is normally locked, you know. We can find out who visited without being let in. Sometimes it’s visitors you don’t want. That’s just a Class A offense. Something even area patrol can handle.”

  Something beeped.

  “Huh?” Kunugi’s face clouded over.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, well…” He said it seemed there’d been two visitors here during Yabe’s absence. Both of them were minors. “Does this girl have a lot of friends?”

  Not really. Generally speaking Yuko’s friends were friends via monitor. She wasn’t known to have any special friends that would come visit her personally.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Kunugi said. “Not even once in a while?

  They’re kids, after all.”

  If it were just one friend that would be something, but two visits from friends in such a short period of time? Kunugi kept typing into his monitor, but he started to make a funny face.

  “You aren’t allowed to tell me the identity of those visitors, are you?”

  “Not normally. But…”

  Kunugi typed some more, then let out a small “whoa” and lifted his face.

  “I’ve found a precedent.”

  “What do you mean precedent?”

  “I was searching cases in which protected information accumulated by police can be made public. If there is a precedent, a written explanation will suffice…”

  Kunugi showed Shizue his monitor display as he made up this excuse. “I’m showing you. They’re both kids who go to your center though…”

  There were countless children in her jurisdiction. Unless she worked with them, a mere name and ID number would be futile.

  But…

  “This is…”

  She knew these kids.

  “Do you know them?” Kunugi asked.

  “This second one, Hinako Sakura, is one of my kids. She’s in the same communication session as Yuko.”

  “Are they friends?”

  They had no interactions.

  At least Shizue didn’t know of any.

  “Sakura is a child of special tastes and has little interaction with any of the other children.”

  By special tastes, she meant…an interest in the occult.

  Hinako Sakura had a strong inclination for mysticism. A good 10 percent of any child population would demonstrate that kind of interest, but when it came to Sakura, it could only be said that she easily surpassed her peers in fervor. She’d been seriously studying divination techniques of the Middle Ages and had, moreover, begun practicing them.

  People like Shizue couldn’t think that a good hobby, but it wasn’t causing any problems, so it wasn’t a target of counseling.

  Regardless, whatever the subject, there were those who would continue to further their knowledge in a specialized or academic way; coercive counseling at the juvenile stages was discouraged.

  Shizue agreed.

  It was no different with kids who were difficult to handle.

  How about this one?

  Yuji Nakamura.

  She didn’t know him. The name looked familiar to her, but she’d seen the register of names and the kids before, so it wouldn’t be unheard of to remember the names of other counselors’ kids.

  “He’s…” Kunugi cleared the display. “He’s apparently a person of interest.”

  “You mean in the killings?”

  “Yeah,” Kunugi said and put his monitor back in the holster. “My monitor signals when someone related to the investigation is mentioned.

  Apparently, this minor, no, child, was with the last victim, Ryu Kawabata, the day he was murdered.”

  “Apparently?”

  “He denies it, but…”

  Kunugi stopped talking and took two steps toward the car, then continued to talk, practically to himself.

  “He visited last night. So he came to this house right after being interrogated.”

  “Does that mean Yuko Yabe is implicated in this case?”

  “It means she could be. I will need to report this.” Kunugi turned around. “This will be extra work for you too. When I send this information, I will have to explain why we got this information from a pri-vate residence. In order to explain how this is a Class A situation, I need your statement.”

  “I don’t mind that, but…” Shizue’s gaze wandered.

  This was unexpected.

  “Hmm?”

  On the other side of the street sandwiched between the buildings moved a black thing.

  “What’s wrong?” Kunugi asked.

  “Over here, just now.”

  The person Shizue’d been looking at hid in the corner where she shifted her gaze.

  Kunugi seemed to swallow the scene in one moment, jutted his chin, then returned the look and bolted down the road. Shizue followed.

  That was…

  Shizue tripped once on the road. It was like she’d forgotten how to run. Running was a decent enough activity certainly not beyond her abilities, but she had never run on asphalt in her life. Even though it was true that it had health benefits.

  At just this side of the median she stopped and looked around her.

  It was like this everywhere, but at dusk, the neighborhood was particularly inactive. In an age when over half the people worked from home, and home delivery of food and sundry goods had become mainstream, there was no more need to be wandering around the city. The sun started to sink and the streetlights went on.

  It was practically real.

  Even with a sense of dimension, merely seeing how sandy the sky looked made it feel less than fresh.

  “Hey, come over here,” Kunugi said.

  When Shizue looked up in the direction from which his voice had come, she saw the rough man holding the delicate arm of a girl in a mourning dress.

  “Let go, let go.” The girl twisted and tried to pull herself from his grip.

  “Stop squirming. I’m just—”

  “I have nothing to do with it. Please let me go.”

  “You don’t—I just asked your name.”

  She was wearing old-fashioned black clothing. Heels that looked like they came from a real shop.


  “Is this…the girl?”

  As soon as Kunugi let go of her arm, Hinako bounced off to the light pole.

  Perhaps because of the way her black clothing absorbed the light, or because the light outside had no warmth, Hinako’s face took on a pale blue cast. Like it would break if you touched it.

  Hinako jerked her face away.

  She was refusing him.

  “Miss Sakura—”

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  Shizue reached her hand out to the girl’s emaciated shoulders but stopped just short of touching her.

  She was known to inflict incredible violence at a mere touch.

  “Hinako, didn’t you have something you wanted to do at Yuko’s house?”

  Shizue couldn’t mention she knew the girl had come for Yuko Yabe. With her face still turned away, Hinako nodded her head several times. Then she turned her head up slowly and shot Shizue a hard look.

  “I didn’t think I had to report that to a counselor.”

  “You’re right, but—”

  “You do have to report to the police.” Kunugi jutted his police badge in front of her face.

  “Police…” Hinako twisted her neck and assumed a difficult-to-read expression, then looked at Kunugi.

  “I’ve been saying that this whole time.”

  “Police…but you’re not in uniform.”

  “The area patrol wears uniforms. They’re citizen police. I’m with the prefectural police. I’m a regional officer.”

  Hinako looked alternately at Shizue and Kunugi several times as if to compare their faces. The jet-black bangs cut dead straight across her forehead fluttered. There was something doll-like about her.

  “Ms. Yabe got it after all…”

  “Mizz?” Kunugi had started in a falsetto but continued in a deeper voice. “What do you mean, ‘after all’?”

  “Well, has something happened to Ms. Yabe?” Hinako paused. “I knew it.” Hinako grabbed at Kunugi’s sleeve. Kunugi, stunned for a moment, looked at Hinako.

  “What makes you think that?”

  He tried not to sound too aggressive. Just enough. He wasn’t used to having direct conversations.